Percevan: Both books deal with coming of age of after rigid fundamentalist christian upbringing, but in different formats: a girl's thought provoking fictional story in a novel (Born again) and a beautiful graphic novel with the autobiographical story of a boy (Blankets).… (more)

MarcusH: While The Underdogs is not a graphic novel, Markus Zusak does create a series of somewhat autobiographical coming of age tales similar to the story told in Blankets. Zusak's prose is poetic and creates images through words as Thompson creates actual images.

I loved everything about this book. The story, the beautiful artwork, EVERYTHING. Definitely recommend this to everyone. It was lovely, heartbreaking, uplifting, and so much more. Keeping this book forever. ( )

Blankets is an attempt to rejuvenate such well-trod themes as social isolation, religious guilt, and first love; the vitality of which has become too frequently obscured by countless hackneyed dramas and endless clichés. Toward the very end of this “illustrated novel,” Craig notes, while walking in snow, how “satisfying it is to leave a mark on a blank surface.” In Blankets, Thompson does just this: through daring leaps of visual storytelling, he makes wonderfully fresh marks upon a surface long worn blank.

In telling his story, which includes beautifully rendered memories of the small brutalities that parents inflict upon their children and siblings upon each other, Thompson describes the ecstasy and ache of obsession (with a lover, with God) and is unafraid to suggest the ways that obsession can consume itself and evaporate.

...credit writer-artist Craig Thompson, 27, for infusing his bittersweet tale of childhood psyche bruising, junior Christian angst, and adolescent first love with a lyricism so engaging, the pages fly right by.

I would be unlikely to share Blankets with someone who told me they wanted to understand comix. Instead, I would give it to anyone who told me they wanted to read a book that made them feel transcendent, sad, generous, hopeful — but above all, to truly feel something.